


Sea Change

by iohannes (amare)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Community: capkink, Kink Meme, M/M, The Winter Soldier spoilers, Trauma, Unfinished, WIP amensty, latent feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:39:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1510763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amare/pseuds/iohannes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky left Steve Rogers behind in New York smelling—weakly—of omega. After the serum, Steve doesn't smell like himself anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a capkink prompt: [Bucky/Steve, A/B/O, beta!Bucky and formerly omega!Steve is now an alpha after the serum](http://capkink.dreamwidth.org/1349.html?thread=58181#cmt58181).
> 
> Thanks to M, J, [hollycomb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb), and everyone else I've forced into being a sounding board. :>

Bucky navigated the days after his rescue like he was in the dark, using the routine of military as the walls he'd feel along in his hunt for a light switch or a door. Nothing sat right, in that same distant way that sleep deprivation didn't sit right. Everything smelled _cold_ , everything tasted like air or his own saliva, and only the muscle memory of breaking down and reassembling his rifle seemed to ground him at all.  
  
When he dreamed at night in the barracks, it was always needles. Needles, the claustrophobic squeeze of straps.  
  
Needles. Straps. Name, rank, serial number. He kept himself busy so he wouldn't have to dream too much during those first few days back.

By the end of the week, when Bucky could smell the smoke from the makeshift campfires again, the shitty coffee used to douse them lingering in the ashes, he got his first real whiff of Steve Rogers since before he'd shipped out.

Bucky's body locked up like the brace before a fall, but he stayed upright. Steve, sensing none of it or happy to ignore it, was matching his stride to Bucky's on their way to the mess, in uniform but his helmet elsewhere. He was saying something, the same cheery but mild small talk that he'd kept up over the last few days, little pauses so Bucky could say his piece if he liked, but Bucky's shocked blood was rushing in his ears and drowning out the words.

The smell of his sweat, of his damned pheromones, was new. He knew what Steve smelled like, wasn't likely to forget it after it seeped into his own clothes and his bag and their shared furniture back in Brooklyn. Steve smelled—weakly—of an omega. Rich, buttery, what Bucky had started to think of as _homey_. He had since they were kids, and it barely changed during what passed for Steve's puberty.  
  
Now there wasn't anything soft or weak or _homey_ about him. He smelled like alpha, like the bite of wintergreen in the air, almost alkaline.  
  
Bucky's steps only faltered for a second, and then he was walking normally, the mess a few yards away. Just once he breathed so deep his nostrils flared. In his peripheral, Steve's body was a head—nearly two heads—taller than it should have been.  
  
"They sure did a number on you," Bucky said finally, some tension or accusation in it that he should have weeded out. That smell was like a veil that had settled over him, maddening, impossible to ignore.  
  
Steve's head dipped down a little, chin nearly touching his chest, but then he lifted it. "Yeah," he agreed.  
  
That was all they ever said, all they'd ever have time to say, about Steve Rogers' new designation. Bucky was going to make some crack about it, the same way he'd made a crack or two about Steve's new body, once he could find it in the shuffled deck of cards that was his mind.  
  
Steve entered the mess first. Bucky took a moment to rub his tight throat, where his scent glands had perked up like they had any right to respond to Steve. His fingers and palm slid across the bristle of stubble, and Bucky swallowed hard when his hand came away smelling like _willing_.  
  
\--  
  
They interviewed Steve and Bucky over and over for the reels, between shots of Bucky staring down his scope at nothing and Steve letting his shield ricochet off of walls so he could catch it in one expert hand. Somewhere in there, the story of how they met transformed into something out of legends. No mention of Steve's status back then, but they'd met when they were kids anyway, supposedly too young to care about designations, and they didn't get segregated till junior high.  
  
Kids in the schoolyard played with instinctive traits without the full force of puberty to back them up. Bullies formed packs and picked on the little ones. Teachers did their best to pull them apart, but everyone quietly accepted that it was training for the real world, just alphas being alphas. Betas watched on the sidelines with a rubbernecker's gaze, and omega children learned by middle school how to lower their eyes and their heads when it got hot.

Except Steve. He yelled in some stupid bully probably-alpha's face until he got whacked in his own, and Bucky looked up from his game of hopscotch to see what all the fuss was about.  
  
Tiny Steve Rogers fighting the bullies until his knuckles were raw and they had him buckling over on the blacktop made for a good story, and James Buchanan Barnes sauntering over and ending it all with a shove and one good punch made it even better. Bucky was pretty sure there was a trading card with his mug on it now, the origins of their _childhood friendship_ immortalized underneath. Maybe somewhere in the fine print they put down his status, disappointing in the face of all that puff. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, Beta. Had a kind of poetry to it. Much better than Sergeant Barnes, ace sniper and plucky sidekick.  
  
Thing was, not once in any of that press did anyone mention why a bunch of eight year olds were trying to loosen a few of Steve's teeth. Sure, he was tiny, everyone in America knew that and clucked over it, but—he was tiny because he was a sickly little omega, small for his age and his designation both. And no one seemed to want to talk about that. It was a footnote, not part of the story the army wanted to sell. Just like Bucky's status.  
  
Bucky thought, back then, and even when he shipped out, that they were an odd but matched pair; Steve so tiny and forceful, Bucky with the authority of a designation he could ape but didn't feel, not where it counted.  
  
Bucky didn't feel like part of a matched set anymore.  
  
For one, the smell that was as familiar to him as the humid grime of Brooklyn in summer, it was all messed up. Aside from what his body was doing in response to it, sending fifty kinds of wrong signals, it didn't smell too familiar. It didn't remind him of the Steve he'd left behind, the one he could all but tip over with a strong shove. Whatever they did to him changed him on a fundamental level, and if Bucky thought about that too long, he'd get pissed.  
  
He looked wrong, he smelled wrong, and his wrongness was taking Bucky down with him. Not once in over fifteen years had Bucky smelled anything but the coziness of Steve's omega scent. Not once had he felt something but the warm rush of brotherhood.  
  
"Barnes, look at the goddamn camera already!"  
  
His training meant he didn't spook at the sudden yell, but Bucky turned slitted eyes on the newest grunt sent to capture the Howling Commandos and Captain America in their glory.  
  
"All right, keep your pants on." He scowled and slung his M1941 across his shoulder.  
  
It was another round of looking artfully rugged off in the woods, on some fake milk run mission, strutting for the camera. Steve was up front and center, when he wasn't bent over fake maps and miming orders, and Bucky caught him turning his head to try and get a glance.  
  
"How much film you got left?" Dum Dum asked.  
  
"Enough," the guy said. Bucky knew without lifting his head he was an overcompensating beta, nervous around so many alphas. Unwashed alphas. Bucky took his hygiene seriously, his dad taught him how important it was to stay as clean and dry as possible, learned it the hard way in the trenches, but apparently not all the commandos got that same talk. Most of them reeked of mud, sweat, coffee, and astringent alpha pheromones.    
  
"I think you've got enough shots of us looking intimidating to make three films, pal," Dum Dum said, tone amused and holstering his pistol.  
  
"Maybe we should take a break," Steve said seriously, still trying to get a look at Bucky out of the corner of his eye.  
  
"Cap's orders," Morita said, grinning, and like that, everyone dispersed.  
  
Bucky planned to go sit in the truck and warm up, but Steve stopped him with a hand on his arm.  
  
"Hey, you all right?"  
  
"Just bored," Bucky said with an easy shrug, flashing his teeth. Steve's vicinity, Bucky was still getting used to that again. "Wishing we were back out in the field instead of cooling our heels, you know?"  
  
It was bullshit, or pure laziness, that said betas and omegas couldn't control their scent glands. A biological response, sure, but if folks could be taught not to blush, it was nothing to avoid sending out the wrong signal. Only time there was a problem was during an omega's cycle, when nature took hold and didn't let them go for a few days. There were supplements to help if it got painful, and even suppressants, but they had a litany of side-effects.  
  
Steve never needed the supplements or the suppressants, which was good because they'd had a hard enough time paying to keep a roof over their heads as it was. He got sick so often, got weak and feverish and cranky, that if he fell victim to estrous sickness, Bucky couldn't tell the difference between that and a bad flu.    
  
With Steve so close, it was an effort for Bucky to keep the smell of his willingness contained, but now that he knew about it, it wsn't going to sneak up on him. Steve couldn't know. Bucky couldn't wrap his own mind around it, and he had no plans to make things awkward between them.  
  
"Okay," Steve said, eyes carefully tracking Bucky's face. He dropped his hand.  
  
Right. Make things _more_ awkward. Steve knew something was up, he was too sharp and knew Bucky too well not to notice the strange beats between them, but with any luck he attributed it to his brand new size.

He wondered sometimes if it was the serum making Steve especially potent, if he had that effect on every beta and omega he came into contact with, because he'd certainly never responded to a male alpha before. Bucky didn't dance backward, despite plenty of opportunity; he stuck to women, and he stuck to betas for the most part.  
  
Maybe it was something Zola did to him, even. Now that was a happy thought.  
  
"You want food? I stuck some rations in my bag."  
  
"My hero," Steve said. His new metabolism made him ravenous, and he was too polite to say anything about it.  
  
The two of them shuffled off toward the truck, Bucky's rifle by his side and Steve's shield anchored above his shoulders like wings, and Bucky jostled Steve with a butt of his shoulder, just to show him he wasn't sore. Steve grinned at him and slung his arm around Bucky's shoulder, which had the unfortunate consequence of sending a wave of clean, crisp, _Steve_ at him. Bucky's knees nearly went weak, and he worked his jaw while he fought to keep an answering response from leaving his skin.  
  
They'd get back to themselves sooner or later. Bucky would stop glancing down to meet the eyes of someone a foot shorter, and Bucky's body would get the message and shut down these haywire responses.

\--

It wasn't like it mattered. If Steve found out, he might in his bleeding heart and out of fondness for Bucky feel obliged—not that Bucky would let him. He was probably busy doodling Agent Carter on every scrap of paper he could find, anyway, and that was the right direction for him to head. Steve could more than hold his own now, and Peggy was a good match for him. Her calm beta scent didn't exactly get _Bucky's_ motor running, but then again, maybe his motor was broken lately.    
  
War was a bad time to think about that sort of thing. They both had their plates full.

\--  
  
Steve stayed glued to his hip like when they were in school, even more than when they lived together. Attentive, almost. Making sure Bucky ate with him and pouring him strong cups of joe. It seemed like the only time Bucky was really alone was when he was off in a high vantage point, finger resting on his trigger, timing his breath with the wind.  
  
The camps they made were necessarily small, and Steve liked to take watch and let the others sleep. Bucky sat up with him most nights and tossed sections of dead tree branches into the fires they shouldn't have made, and Steve looked happy for the company. He sketched in the fire's light when Bucky told him to take a break, and the pencil he used looked tiny in his huge mitt. The flickering shadows made his strong features look even more alien.  
  
It was easy to keep up jokes and camaraderie in bars, when everyone was feeling warm and boisterous and somebody had a tab open. The quiet moments, those were the times it was harder to pretend that nothing had changed.

A cold pint seemed to have less effect on him, and sleep was harder to chase, or at least not as much of an albatross around his neck, dragging him down after a long day. He tried not to think about it. He studied the fire and the stitching on his gloves and Steve's broad shoulders as he drew.  
  
"You should get some sleep," was what Steve always said when Bucky stayed up with him, brows drawn together in a line of concern.  
  
"I'll sleep when the war's over, pal," was Bucky's usual response, half a lazy smile on his face to let Steve know he appreciated the effort.  
  
\--  
  
He fell, and he slept, but the war raged on.  


	2. Зимний солдат

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is our recommendation that the asset be returned to deep freeze until conditioning has been exhaustively tested. We agree that his tactical prowess is immense, but clearly his calibration is not complete, and his inferior status only compounds matters. The deployment of the asset is a risk while he cannot follow basic orders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for hanging on for so long! This chapter was a headache and a half to try and cobble together. Thanks to everyone who put their eyeballs on it and cheered me on.

Sergeant Barnes.

The procedure has already started.

Sergeant Barnes, Bucky, no, he does not close his eyes but grits his teeth. Cannot hear the grinding of bone there above grinding saw. Taste of vomit in his mouth. No medication. Blood when he bites down. He heals fast. No scab to reopen.

Blue jacket, red blood, white snow. Red, white, and blue.

The procedure has already started.

\--

His new arm can form a fist. He can use it. 

\--

He wakes up and does not know his name. 

Blip of thought is overridden with a tang of panic in his throat. Bile, blood, IV medications so strong he can taste, smell them. Shaking, too weak to do more than rattle on hard—metal?—table beneath. Left side numb, cold, like the table. No clothes. Vision blurs as consciousness fades, but sound is always the last to go. Harsh consonants. Not English.

He must speak English. 

\--

He wakes. Again? The asset—not in English. He overhears them discussing the asset, water dripping from hair, eyelashes, tip of nose. Nostrils flaring like a bull, shoulders heaving. Not from the ice, but from the tile stall, shower. Shower. German. English. 

He can speak German. He speaks German. 

They ask him a series of questions easy to answer. Status report. Extend arm. Make a fist. Walk. Stand. Motor control. Still shaking. Weak legs. 

"Double caloric intake."

Shaking stops. Stomach churns. Doubles over. Vomits on floor before evaluation is over. Needle in right arm.

"Put him back."

\--

The asset regains speech after one point five minutes outside of the chamber. Consciousness—breathing accelerates—motor skills—confusion—speech. 

Do you understand. 

Yes. Da. Water drips from his face, splashes inside his open mouth. He sputters.

Stand. Walk. Make a fist. Present yourself for measurements.

Five point eight percent increase in muscle mass. A pat to his arm, eyes making a strange crescent shape behind lenses as the man smiles. Very good. Let's get started.

\--

Himmelherrgott. 

A scuffle as they put their nervous but forceful hands on his chest. Their wrists emit nothing but sour fear and beta. No alpha, no omega, no hint of anything his entire body is primed to chase.

He has failed. He is never told, only secured inside of his standing coffin and turned to ice too quickly to feel it. He takes one last inhalation, as if he can pull the smell from dank air, and keeps it, burning and then crystallized, in his lungs.

\--

EXCERPT FROM COMPREHENSIVE REPORT ON ASSET L UP TO 20 DECEMBER 1947

Document L-36 

Personal property of H-ZOLA, ARNIM

PAGE 3

Asset L was forcibly collected in an alley six blocks from his target. (See page 6 for completion of mission details.) In contrast to the asset's behavior at launch, he had become distracted, aggressive, and only responded to and in English. When it became evident the asset was unresponsive to commands, agents on scene quickly executed protocol #6. (See document L-20 for list of asset-approved sedatives deployed.)

It is our recommendation that the asset be returned to deep freeze until conditioning has been exhaustively tested. We agree that his tactical prowess is immense, but clearly his calibration is not complete, and his inferior status only compounds matters. The deployment of the asset is a risk while he cannot follow basic orders. 

RECOMMENDATION

A) Returned to deep freeze for 6-8 months AND  
B) Cognitive adjustment OR  
C) Indefinite retirement of Asset L

PAGE 4

After researching the asset's history of previous deployment, I discovered that he was dispatched to Arrezo three years ago. Narrative report #2 (document L-38) confirms that the asset scented gland residue from his former commander, Captain Steven Rogers. Witnesses support that the asset conformed to tracking behavior (documents L-39-41) until the agents arrived to subdue him. This development is troubling, but it is also illustrative of holes in our program, and those holes are readily fixed.

At this time, we will not be retiring the asset. The obvious solution in the wake of the Reich's fall is to make best use of our resources, and Asset L is invaluable to us in our current state. 

As the highest-ranking Hydra agent on base, it is under my authority that we move forward. The asset will be wiped and put on ice until we have developed effective olfactory blocking techniques. I estimate implementation to take no longer than one month. 

Signed ARNIM ZOLA, 6 January 1948

\--

"Do you understand your mission?"

He cannot smell. He sniffs his skin near the shoulder, leans in and sniffs the chipped tile, and hears laughter. There is nothing. An absence. It is distracting. He does not know if he is allowed to inquire.

The scientist with glasses smiles over the top of his clipboard. "Your other senses will compensate for the lack. Now, it is very important you answer me. Do you understand your mission?"

"Yes," the asset says. 

They give him clothing, tactical and dark, but he is not yet dry. He shakes his head and body to dispel the moisture, and there is more laughter. 

"Fucking dog."

The mission is completed within parameters. Two more hours and they would have pulled him. Forcefully, permanently. It was a test. He passed. Barely. He learns this during the debriefing.

"Do you have anything you wish to say for the record?"

The skin at the join is irritated. Range of movement is not limited. Hunger pangs. "I lost the target between buildings. Could have tracked him faster if my nose worked."

"You will acclimate."

"Yes."

\--

Second mission, he takes a handful of capsules with a ration pack that sticks like glue in his throat and tastes like peanuts. He burns through food fast. Too fast. He must stand for injections, food, and now pills.

Zola is watching him with the same serene eyes he always does. The clipboard is against his chest. He is only watching. No notes.

"A few pills, and we're that much closer to perfecting you. You will find your lack of scent extremely useful. An omega in estrous couldn't pick you out of a crowd." He is very proud.

There is no status report, so the asset does not speak.

He hears later, as he is checking his weapons, that they have castrated the dog. The asset appreciates the pun. He tests the weight of his weapon by pointing it in their direction.

Zola does not witness it, and he will not witness their subsequent retribution, but for now the asset sneers as scientists scatter and retreat behind glass. 

\--

In Zurich, he puts the snub nose of a pistol to an alpha's temple and keeps his metal arm secure around his throat.

It is meant to look like a suicide, but the target alpha lives up to his designation and does not obey the asset's instructions. He has no point of contact with base and must do the best he is able with what he has. He has: the arm, a pistol, a rifle, four knives, two grenades. He is choosing between the arm and the pistol when the alpha speaks. 

"You don't want to do this," he says with a thick tongue, and the asset knows what it means when he tries to force the asset's gaze down with his own. 

"Listen to me," he says, tone far less low and soothing when the asset's grip does not falter and his gaze does not waver.

He knows how to laugh because he has heard it upon waking and stumbling across the floor back at base, has heard snatches in alleyways, and earlier as the alpha spoke on the telephone to a distant companion. Ha. Ha. Ha. His voice is hoarse and the sound rattles out, but the meaning is clear. "That shit doesn't work on me, pal."

The alpha's eyes widen in the moment before he pulls the trigger. 

His desperate production of scent slicks the metal of his hand, but he is already misted with blood. He drops the body to the floor and wipes his hand off ineffectually on the couch.

\--

The Soviets use what Zola—the computer—calls a miracle cocktail, suppressing his scent but giving him the use of his nose. They also upgrade his arm, quieting its mechanics and cooling it substantially. 

He tests its range of motion in front of the monitor where Zola's eyes, such as they are, can see. The shining red star is a new addition to go with the replaced plating.

"I suppose we must take what we are given," he says, sighing and sounding tinny like a bad transmission. 

Now that Zola has been transformed, the asset has been without consistent handling. The Soviets offer management, missions, and vital upgrades. 

He does not remember being able to smell before, but now it is incomparably useful. His new handlers call him Hound, and sometimes The Winter Soldier. Once he identifies a target, he does not lose them.

They tell him his loyalty to Zola, to one handler, is problematic. He is HYDRA's weapon, yes, but he is in the hands of the USSR. 

\--

Even after the Cold War ends, Russian is hard to shake. Pierce hypothesizes that he spent more time off ice during those decades than any other, and it is the reason for his affinity. Pierce speaks passable Russian, so he is not "overly bothered." He smiles.

Pierce talks to him as much as Zola did, but he imparts less information. Instead of targets and briefings, the asset is treated to stories and parables while he sits shivering on the floor. They do not immediately bring him to the shower, the lack of which keeps him weaker and colder for longer. 

Pierce never asks for confirmation. The asset's kill record speaks for itself.

\--

The man on the bridge smells like _home warm compatible strong home home home_. The memories—blown out like they're projected onto a wall in full daylight—follow him from extraction back to base. He dunks his head in water and still the smell is not cleaned from his skin, from the inside of his nose and the back of his throat.

Once he gets a scent, it doesn't leave him. 

He asks, but the answer given is unsatisfactory. No assignment has ever smelled like home.

The pain of the wipe is at least respite from confusion.

\--

The asset has not responded to a scent in over thirty years, and he nearly clamps a hand around his own neck as he feels himself secrete like an omega. 

It is worse when he speaks. " _You know me._ " 

He lies, as the asset has seen many targets lie, out of desperation or calculation. He must have been engineered, a weakness his handlers did not account for.

Steve Rogers smells like mate. He smells wrong.


End file.
